A more detailed analysis of Boyer’s “The Life Informatic.”
And how it relates to my research.
As the semester comes to a close and our research paper’s due date quickly approaches, I have taken some time to read through my pieces throughout the semester. For the last few months, I struggled with how I would connect my research topic with the different books we read in class. Many of the books seemed like they had little in common with my topic regarding how students imagine the library — besides the fact that they are all ethnographies.
It wasn’t until recently that I was really able to pinpoint where my research was taking me. After I had a solid approach to my topic, I could examine other subjects more broadly and relate it back to my research. Two ideas that continued to come up in my research were how students rely on digital sources or technologies over print because it’s “easier” and also how the library has to adjust to these changes in preference. In short, it seems that many people seem to blame the internet for “doing away” with the library.
I realize now that these ideas are reflective of Dominic Boyer’s book, The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era in which he conducts fieldwork in three German news organizations. Boyer brings up the idea of “digital liberalism” which suggests the merging of technological and ideological forces over recent years that has “rebalanced” forms of mass communication from radial to lateral approaches in addition to containing liberal views regarding individuality and publicity (The Life Informatic). One aspect of digital liberalism that Boyer addresses in relation to contemporary news journalism is screenwork.
In his book, Boyer writes that “As [Raymond] Williams puts it, ‘particular social decisions’ were made regarding development, institutionalization, and commercialization at all phases of technical emergence; decisions that refracted the actancy of technology through the agency of human purposes and understandings” (Boyer, 126). In other words, decisions are made by humans and institutions regarding how technology is or isn’t used based on what serves them “best”. Boyer connects this with the critique many people have of contemporary news journalism as a primarily sedentary and isolated activity because of screenwork.
He argues that in the past, different technologies (which were primarily sedentary) were used for different aspects of developing the story, such as the typewriter (Boyer, 130). In comparison, computers today enable almost everything to be done on one screen, which results in journalists staying in one spot or sitting in front of the screen (Boyer, 130). On the contrary, Boyer writes “[…] the evident locational fixity of screenwork could change were laptop or tablet interfaces rather than desktop interfaces made organizational priorities” (Boyer, 131). In other words, many people blame screens for making journalism as an isolated and sedentary activity; however, the organizations and staff could opt to use more portable devices so that everyone could interact with one another and move around.
This is similar to my findings of how many people blame technology for replacing “traditional” libraries. The library’s staff are responsible for choosing which books, journals, or other sources are purchased and made available to students; however, acquiring new material can take months. For students. there’s arguably “more recent studies” available online than in print at the library. So in this way, it’s not technology we have to blame for the decline in library use, but the library’s staff themselves who decide what sources are available. As a result, this could lead to the value of information available at the library being compared to the value of information available online. If students can find more recent and reliable sources online, why would they want a dusty book that hasn’t been checked out since the 70s? Additionally, some professors require that students use print sources — but some of them don’t. If the professor requires students use a print source, many of them might have to go to the library to check one out. If the professor doesn’t require it, students might find everything they need online. This decision on the part of professors and the students they teach reinforces how people decide how technology is or isn’t used.
In other words, technology might change the way things have been done in the past — but at the end of the day — it’s people and institutions who have the power to decide how and what they use technology for.
